Thursday, May 12, 2005

Campus Barbarians

At The Huffington Post, Dennis Prager wrote about recent incidents of incivility on university campuses. He specifically cited cases of grossly profane comments made to Justice Antonin Scalia and Ann Coulter. He also provided a link to a distasteful article about the incident written by the student who insulted Coulter. Prager wrote:

These symbolize to me one of the most profound differences between the Left and the Right. I do not believe the Left recognizes how thin the line between civilization and chaos/evil is. As a Jew born shortly after the Holocaust, Nazi Germany and the gas chambers play a great role in my thinking. I recognize that the most cultured European country built Auschwitz; that Nazism was a secular, not a Christian ideology; that Ph.D.’s and intellectuals led the way to the death camps just as they did to the Gulag and other Communist holocausts.

Universities and museums were morally worthless in Weimar and Nazi Germany as they are now in America and Europe. So I have a primal fear of the moral chaos that follows the breaking down of America’s real moral foundations, such as Judeo-Christian values, public decency, freedom of speech, and the military.I know, and I'm sure Prager would agree, that the vast majority of Americans, of whatever political persuasion, would never personally engage in behavior so crude. However, some would attempt to understand it, and others might even try to justify it. That kind of thinking serves only to encourage those who attack the thin line between civilization and chaos. We should all condemn the actions of extremists of both the left and right, in our own defense.

By the way, for those who don't know, Prager is a well-regarded conservative radio talk show host, author, and columnist. Kudos to The Huffington Post for including his voice. I'm impressed.

1 Comments:

Wow. I read Araj's rant and what struck me so forcibly was that he thought that somehow he provided a compelling statement there.

I don't understand why people think that vulgarity is somehow an argument in and of itself. He would have gotten a lot further by asking the same question in polite verbiage, and waiting for her to answer.

I agree with Prager. Araj's type of tactics do have a whiff of the Brownshirts.